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The eye ranged through a long lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue, and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the opening. I had now come in sight of the house. It is a large building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style of Queen Elizabeth's day, having been built in the first year of her reign.
From the steamer we saw the ruined fortress, Annabreen Castle, said to be six hundred years old. The masonry is very curious, being all done within and without, quoins, doorways, window frames, of undressed stone, and yet most admirably done.
The suggestion that they were originally beacon towers is not very convincing, though the Ouse at the time they were built was a wider and deeper stream, forming in fact an estuary haven. The more prosaic explanation is that lack of stone for the quoins, which every square flint tower must have, led the builders to adopt this form.
Thus he slowly ambled into the town, catching on his way distant toots of the postman's horn. In due time he made his way into the High Street, broad and unpaved, with rows of lime or poplar trees before the principal houses, the most modern of which were of red brick, with heavy sash-windows, large stone quoins, and steps up to the doors.
The main body was of the big symmetrical Louis XIV. style or, as it is now the fashion to call it, Queen Anne brick, with stone quoins, big sash-windows, and a great square hall in the midst, with the chief rooms opening into it.
This width being so small, it is probable that the arcading of the nave was continued right up to the choir arch. There was no tower over the crossing. Of a south tower, as has been mentioned, the foundations have been found, but the only signs of it now left above ground seem to be some tufa quoins in the wall by the cloister door.
The sponges were of soft fast wood, "As Aspe, Birch, Willow, or such like," and had heads covered with "rough Sheepes skinne wooll," nailed to the staff with "Copper nayles." "Ladels," or powder shovels, for the loading of guns, were seldom used at sea. The guns were elevated or depressed by means of handspikes and quoins.
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